CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 17 August 1907, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE.

LKPPEKTOX KAIWAY STATION. To the Editor. Sir, —Allow iiK", through the medium o' your valuable paper, to protest, on behalf of the Lepperton residents, against the proposal of the Kailwav Department 0 abolish the Lepperton station and to .-!,ift ihe Sentry Hill station about threequartcrs of a mile further south. The reason* given by tie- Department are two in ntiuihi'i, viz., (1) At Sentry Hill it is, asserted that, owing to the stecp-ucs-s <»f the grade, trains proceeding southwards tiud it dillieult to get uuder way. Thus valuable time <u lost! Now, sir, how is it that the Department h so anxious all at once about this dreadful lois of time? Perhaps one of the hejds of the Department has jksard at la-t '.hit •■procrastination is the thief of time," and so things are (going to be accelerated at last in the lailway world! Hut it is a well-known fact that ev;*. train slops at Sentry j Hill for from sev. n to fifteen minutes. True, it is a refreshment .station, but 1 «issengers proceeding southward from Xew Plymouth or Wiutara can hardly be in urgent need of refreshment, seeing that it is only about lialf-an-hour's run Jrom either place. I think that if the liains were despatched smarter it would

>ave the time the railway officials are in such a blue funk about. (2) So many small >tations are a nuisance, as they involve ho many stops. For whom, then, do the railways exist? Ostensibly for the conveniences of settlers along the line, but really for the beneiu of red-taped officialdom which is rapi.tly getting this country under its thumb. f 'Red-ta]»e," moreover, has no business acumen or it could see that abolishing Lepperton station is a bad business proposition; people (and they arc not few in munl>er. particularly on Saturdays, as the guards could testify), ; who now make use of the station would drive into New Plymouth rather than walk the three-quarters of mile furtncr. Sir, it seems to me the Railway Department would sjK»nd its surplus jcash to much better advantage if it were ,t" provide more rolling stock, of which there is always such a shortage when Inere is a rush of business on, than by ituiking expensive alterations which only

r.nnoy and inconvenience iW country ■ patron- 5 .—1 am, etc. ' LEITEKTOXIAX.